


Secrets We Dare Not Tell

by Marta



Category: Lord of the Rings (2001 2002 2003), Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Historians, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-04
Updated: 2010-04-04
Packaged: 2017-10-17 03:21:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/172372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marta/pseuds/Marta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the burdens of history. (Barahir-centric.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Secrets We Dare Not Tell

> There was added to [the Red Book] an abbreviated version of those parts of The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen which lie outside the account of the War. The full tale is stated to have been written by Barahir, grandson of the Steward Faramir, some time after the passing of the King. ... ("Note on the Shire Records," Prologue, The Lord of the Rings)

Sometimes, Barahir wished he had never picked up a quill, or at least had set it down the sooner. 'Twas well enough to correspond with cousins and friends in distant lands. And to read the king's words, to know the laws, that was pure liberation. He knew that line which citizens might approach but never transgress, and he could point to his fellow lords who beat their servants, or the tradesmen who drank away their children's suppers, and he could proudly say: This shall not stand.

So perhaps it was not such an awful thing, that he had learned his letters while still young. And putting his thoughts, his honest musings, to paper, that too had been worthwhile. It cleared the mind, let him purge his soul of those things he could not change; for, written down and locked away, they somehow seemed less ever-at-hand. But pity the day he had first added to Gondor's over-crowded libraries! Nay, 'twould have been better if he'd run off to the wars, died on a Khandish blade at sixteen. Better, much better, than to bear history's secret and keep it untold. If his childish yearnings, once out of sight, had been pushed out of mind as well, the opposite seemed just as true. What could not be written down, codified and exposed to all, it would never give him a moments rest.

He might have had a hero's death. In a different time, if he had been a lesser man's son, if Destiny had been less kind... but no, the artist's thousand smaller ones seemed his fate. It seemed he lost a bit of himself with each secret left untold, and he was stuck: he could not risk unguarded truth, and once started, he could not still his pen.

Oh, there were no great scandals missing from his annals. The king Telcontar was no bastard son of some less-than-royal sire, he was truly Elendil's heir as far as Barahir knew. And the Queen, she was no hag, remade in Lúthien's likeness for history's sake. But she might have been. And that secret wore on him, wore Barahir down: reality might have been otherwise, but history was dictated by ages past. If Undómiel had been buck-toothed and mousy-haired, or if Telcontar's thrice-great-grandfather had been the king's counselor who'd tupped the Queen while the King was away at the wars... whatever the case had been, Barahir knew he was bound to write what duty demanded -- be it Truth or no. 

There were other things, other tales, less scandalous perhaps and about less vaunted persons but no more tolerated from a historian's pen. He longed for those quiet days of his youth, when his writings might be left unnoticed and undisturbed. But that could not be helped, and Barahir was the honorable son of an honorable line. He paid history's tax with his silence, and bore it as best he could.


End file.
